Mine would have been zero but for this coreloss. Wife's a bit gullible, she says it will protect our appliances. But we have our own solar power plant. No need for grid power
I gave up looking at the long list of charges on our noreco bills a long time ago and now only look at the KWH used and the amount to pay but as core loss has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread i had a look at all the things on the bill this month. Our core loss is zero, i suppose that's because we don't have our own transformer, one thing i did notice is the senior citizens subsidy, funny we get this as the account is in my wife's name and she is not senior. When i looked at the amount of the subsidy it's 0.0002php per KWH so noreco are not really giving much away
You may have misread that item on your Noreco bill Charly. The 0.0002 php per Kwh isn't a subsidy you're getting (in error); Noreco charges that amount per Kwh to every customer below 60, so they have money to subsidize the elderly. In other words it isn't something you're receiving but paying.
I decided to install solar due to the fact that Noreco said they "made a mistake" on my bill so I paid 2 months for a one month bill. I had solar installed by Visayan Solar and the owner Jeff is an American and has been doing this for a long time. I am very happy with the installation and also installing net metering. I am waiting for my new meter but net metering sends unused electric back to Noreco. They won't pay you for it but in the end my bill will end up being negative because of it. I also have a generator but am not using it right now saving me money on diesel which was a large costs with all the brown outs we have here. If you are thinking about it I do recommend contacting Visayan Solar. We have such a large amount of sun power.
Our Road to Solar Power Around 7 or 8 years ago we started to consider the alternative power sources, mainly due to the prevalence of “brown-outs” in our area. During this period we were also experiencing repeated failures of electrical goods (TV’s and computers). However, at that time, solar power was relatively expensive with solar panel efficiency less than 20%. About 4 years ago, after the failure of yet another TV, we bought and installed servo driven AVR’s (Automatic Voltage Regulator) in an attempt to protect our electrical goods. These will maintain an output voltage of 220V as long as the input voltage remains above 150V. As these enable monitoring of the supply voltage we were very surprised at the huge variation in the supply voltage - generally 160V-200V but sometimes as low as 90V and very rarely reaching the alleged supply voltage off 220V. Another consideration is the reduced degradation of modern N-type panels. 8 years ago standard panels lost about 1% of their output each year but with the newer N-type panels degradation is reduced to around 0.4% providing better yields in hot climates and longer lifespan. The Tangerine Tosspot swung the final decision for us to take the plunge and after 8 weeks of operation (>1.3MWh consumption) we are extremely happy. The system is a 12.6kWp grid tie hybrid consisting of a 12kW hybrid inverter, 20 N-type 605W bifacial panels (6E, 8S, 6W) with 3 x 314AH, 51.2V, 16kWh batteries (48kWh in total). Installed in a week with the minimum of disturbance by a local company who I would definitely recommend. The system works exceptionally well – Remaining battery power (SOC – State of Charge) at 6 a.m. has not yet dropped below 60% and is generally around 70-75%. On a sunny morning the batteries recharge to 100% SOC by about 10 a.m. – For Info; We have 3 ref’s and 2.5 freezers running continuously 24/7 plus, in the morning running a 2HP jet pump (90 mins), 2 x 6kw water heater (20 – 30 mins each) and twin electric hob (>1 hr) plus numerous rice cookers and kettles for coffee. On very cloudy or rainy days it can take until around 1 p.m. to reach 100% SOC. After the batteries are charged then the system automatically adjusts to powering the household usage (e.g. If the boss is baking then it will adjust to the power requirements of the 3.3kW oven) without depleting the batteries. If, at some stage, we have an extended rainy period depleting the batteries, the inverter can be programmed to recharge the batteries at a suitable time when the grid connection is turned on. So, all in all, a robust system with fully (and remotely) programmable flexibility in operation. Main Benefits 1. Stable voltage at 230V irrespective of the load 2. Zero brown-outs 3. Zero bills from Noreco (we have a grid tie but so far it’s not been turned on) – Noreco added P5.60 charge to a zero bill for reading the meter 4. ROI in just over 6 years - If you factor in the cost of replacement TV’s and running multiple AVR’s then the ROI is reduced to less than 5 years. 5. Peace of mind – not having to worry about low voltage damaging equipment or the power going off halfway through baking a cake. Perfect pies & pizzas every time because the oven got to the right temperature quickly and maintained it.
